Hi guys, I've been experimenting with the AIW lines and started with the fastest line. The lines were already in there and pretty okay, so I thought that one was a good one to start with. Only problem was, the speed in corners. So I went on track and made the fastest line visible; it seemed pretty okay and about the same line I am driving myself. However; the AI didn't get out of corners fast and just slowed down when they should step on the throttle. I can imagine that stepping on to would make de car understeer so I made the new line a bit less against the outside; there should be some room for understeer....... Now; the AI still goes slow and brakes/shifts back while there really is no use for it! No problem when they just floor it, but they don't. I mean; I can take that corner in 4th and they shift back to 1st. Now recording that line, I didn't go al that fast as I was trying to "drive beautiful lines", but no where near THAT slow. I did make sure the lap that was fastest, was the one I wanted to save btw. Could it be that the game records other things with the fastest line too? Like how much speed I carried and steering input and so on? Still; it shouldn't be that slow........ Any ideas on this? Who can say some wise words? Thanks in advance!
from the tutorial: The best way to create the “fastest” (or the racing line) is to drive it as if you were actually racing the track, trying to set the fastest time possible with the cleanest driving. From that I'd read it as though you need a fast lap as going slower, to "drive beautiful lines" as you say, could have implications on the AIs speed at certain points. One other thing that I did for a track was to alter the Speed variable in some of the way points manually, this helped when I had AI braking mid corner due to the track surface, this could help with your issue but I'd be pressed to do a Fast clean lap first and see what happens. Edit: not forgetting the new way to do Fast Paths is to record all your laps and pick one of the best from the replay (dev mode only), not exactly sure how it works (not done it myself yet) so hopefully someone can be of more help with that
The speed you drive the line is largely irrelevant. From my experiments it seems that the corner arcs are best taken at speed as when you drive slower you are missing one key component of the dynamics... Weight! Navigator, I could provide a bunch of information about what 'might' be going on, but if you wouldn't mind uploading just the AIW file, I'd be happy to take a look and advise.
yeah that's one thing I found myself from doing "slower" FAST paths it meant I was missing the Apex and actually driving the corners "wrong", thus the AI wasn't exactly good! After that I just learnt the track properly then went about creating a FAST path at normal racing speed, then tweaking bits here and there in the AIW tool when the AI had issues.
Thanks for the response guys. I should have told; I did do a fast lap recording too, but it had no use........ After that I started doing slower laps. But they are al about the same.
Driving slower than the car allows can make you weave left and right slightly, because you can put the car wherever you want with the steering wheel. When you're driving fast the car's inertia (weight, as matf1 said) forces you to create smooth lines... unless you lose control A slight-looking kink or deviation in the AIW can make the AI slow in preparation for it, so I'd agree driving fast laps in whatever car you're driving is a good idea. The car itself can be a factor here, because a slower one with decent grip will get back to that point of "put it wherever you want" and then AI come along in faster and/or lower grip cars and then they're on the limit just trying to follow your slightly weaving line, and slow down a bit. If a fast smooth lap is still producing slow AI, I'm not sure
To create a fast path with driving at racing speed could work. - but the chance that this end up in a real smooth line is (depending on skill) low. I for one recommend doing it at lower speed, so you can make a really "nice, beautiful" and smooth one. But then you have to take into account that the cars would go wider (in race) as you would naturally do when doing the line in slomo (because of inertia)! That´s why I set a really low steering lock to "simulate" this. For the speed AI do at that line, it doesn´t matter how fast you was when you made the line. Speed variable does nothing. From just looking at the line, it is very hard, or nearly unpossible to tell if it is good or not. And when you made the new line, of which you thought "must be good!",- then experience that the AI is slower than before (lol happens the first 50 attempts) then it isn´t smooth enough! Try to do the turns with one steering input (one equal radius)! Every correction can cause slow downs (small corrections are automaticly smoothed out, but you should avoid it). Every uneven micro-kink can cause this! When you test the AI, let them drive at least 10 laps so that they smooth it out themselfes! Sometimes a path that seems slower (in the first 1-2 laps) can end up in being the fastest, as you always have to take into account that the AI is learning! Turns that they take in the first attempts in 1st gear, they take after 10 laps in 4th (when lucky). And as always: practice, practice, practice... All I can say for now.
You have mostly the same observations as myself but at some point you become bogged down in detail. Constant 4th gear is fine, slow, fast it doesn't matter. Yes you need to be smooth No you do not need to be ultra smooth. You are right that sliding or anything above a minor correction is likely to cause undesired results. The line however, is also not a laid perfectly to your driving, it's normalised at least a little. The most important thing is the line. If I want the AI to get on the throttle early, the apex will be set to reflect that. If I want them to go through a chicane instead of around it, then the line and corridors will allow me to do that. Look at your fast line and visualise the left and right paths a cars width either side. AI can and will use all of this territory, situationally dependant. They will also exceed this territory if pushed or to avoid. If I go around the chicane instead of through it, I can expect slow AI. You can tell offline drivers when they first come online drive this way. Using the corridors to guide them instead makes them use all of the available road and grip to do what they want to do. Smashing over the kerbs, getting the rear out on occasion... It's awesome! Even if I have a massive oversteer moment, as long as the path is still on line, I can smooth it out. She'll be right Mate! Don't sweat the small stuff. * I do imagine it wasn't as smart in rF1 and I could certainly understand all of your comments being applied to that.
Navigator, try what I mention above. Straight line it or use a more acute angle (I have no idea what corner type we are talking about) and adjust with corridors if necessary.
Thanks for the advise guys; I go and play with this as I have a lot of things to try out now! But what is a waypoint and what is a corridor? I realise now I thought it was the same, but its probably not........ I do see purple things normally when starting up in dev (and don't know what to do with them so I leave it) and when I make a line, I see -all of the sudden- all of those greenn things on the track. Those are waypoints, right? I have to go deeper into it I notice........thought I would "just make a line" and all would be okay........ehhhh........could have known.........
Yo yo, matf1, agree! Although altering corridors is most of the time not needed. This is somewhat advanced and Navi you can do without that for now. Yes, green crosses are waypoints. You can hide them in "show/hide"-menu, so you can drive fine without annoying green things! Don´t forget in "Path sub menu" to select "Fastest" in first line and in line "actionable path"
Perhaps you could make hitting the apices easier by building some temporary guides for yourself in 3dsMax. -- Using an overhead view, place small box/epoly objects around the track where you think the car should be at each apex. -- Put a bright colored texture on them, enter them into your scn file, and export them to rF (no collide, not drivable). -- When you are done making your aiw file, you can remove them from the scn file and gmt folder. Easy to find the apex from a couple hundred meters up in 3dsMax.... less to think about while recording the fast line. Then you only need to smoothly 'connect the dots' while recording your line.
Got it better now, thanks guys! But I mean; it's a hell of a lot of work to make it proper! I know how to get around a track in a nice manner, but all of those lines weren't good enough. To get it done; I had to drive some weird line, you won't believe! Anyway; a lot of the tracks I want to "adjust", just have minor issues like touching one barrier but make ALL cars tough it and so messing up the offline race. But its just one point at the track; all the rest is okay. Making a new race line, will get me into other difficulties I think........this test wasn't all that great. Is there a way to just alter the racing line at ONE point of the track? That should suffice in 80% of them.
Yes Navigator you can make small adjustments if necessary. Have a look at this picture. As Peterchen said, it's not something you need to worry about. However it may also be exactly what you are looking for... View attachment 17347 In this picture, we see the 'corridors' mentioned previously. You can make them visible or not in the show/hide menu. The blue parts of the line tell the AI not to cross. They still will if pushed wide but will try to avoid it. I can adjust this corridor, essentially making one lane on the track. This heavily influences the line that already exists. With your mouse, draw around a waypoint so that it selects. Now you can use shift/left and shift/right arrows on your keyboard to move that blue part in or out. Unselect and save when happy. You can see ISI attempted to 'funnel' the cars through this section, most likely because they were having trouble two wide, or were tapping the wall to often.
Follow simple rules and there is no trouble to be found. -Always work with a copy. -Make backups very often -One step at a time Try a sweeping track (still no idea which we are talking about) * oh and those purple things can and should be removed from view when doing lines as it tends to place extra load on the system. Turn it off with Ctrl-H
I don't know if it can be done in dev mode... if so, maybe someone here can tell us. In the aiw file, the FASTEST driving line is a series of offset distances (to one side or the other) of each waypoint's position. Change a waypoint's fast line offset parameter, and the line will move. If you change a waypoint's fast line offset parameter to -4.0000, the fast line (next to that waypoint) would move to a position 4m directly to the left side of that waypoint. Positive numbers move it to the right.... and 0.0000 would put it directly over the waypoint. If your track has 700 main track waypoints, there are 700 fast line offsets (one for each wp). Connect the dots, and that's the fast line you see in dev mode. It's not particularly difficult, but it is time consuming to edit an aiw file manually (why I'm coding a fast way to create and edit aiw files visually in 3dsMax). If you want to know how to manually edit a fast line within the track's aiw file using a "clean", free text editor (like NoteTab Light), just ask, and I'll post directions in this thread on how to find a particular wp, and which parameter to change. Hint: wp_pathInfo2=(0,HERE,-1,0) View attachment 17348
See; I'm a lot wiser now. Cant try it right now because I'm at work Of course an evening follows where I go and put it to the test. However, those waypoints.....I played with them late last night, try to see what happened. However; I could select one and the green went red. The purple thing to the side was visible but not the line in between. Okay; I can select to get it visible; I try that. BUT; when I did use ctrl with the keyboard arrows and only the thing itself moved.......I dont want it to move itself, right? Writing this; I now see you said "shift".......is that it? Is that the difference? Okay, gonna see tonight, cant wait! @Bink, thanks for the offer and I will take you up on that, but dont get me wrong when I say I dont ask for it now. I think this stuff is pretty hard (well, for me it is, I'm not that much of a wizzard) and I want to learn it this way first as I am already "pretty deep" (for me that is) into it. But I will take you up on it @matf1, indeed, I didn't say what track still, not on purpose. Its Melbourne but I dont know what version anymore.........changed the name some while ago........
LOL Bink!!! Really???????? You edit the fast path via texteditor?? Now THAT´s HARD!! LOL!! Hey, is perfectly possible in Devmode! When you select a waypoint (green thing goes red) without showing the path (path sub-menu: "actionable path") or the corridors (show/hide menu) or anything else then you move the waypoint itself with shift+arrows. When path is visible, then you move the path instead with shift+arrow! So when theres just a small correction to be made at one point, make path visible/actionable, select waypoint, push line left or right with shift+arrow. Tip: with CTRL+arrow the steps are much finer.
You can also multiple-select by dragging over the top of waypoints, like selecting multiple icons on your desktop.
Guys, my apologies. Going from memory I wrote shift, but it does nothing except send people on wild goose chases. *also thanks, more for the doco now. It is CTRL not shift What I didn't expand on is: Left and right arrow keys to move the blue line in and out from the right hand side on a clockwise track. Up and Down arrow keys to move the blue line in and out from the left hand side on a clockwise track. The red and white are static and used to reference left and right lanes. View attachment 17350 View attachment 17351 In the second picture I used ctrl down for the left hand side and ctrl left for the right! The difference between the two is, the first is the original. The second would be if I wanted to 'funnel' the AI between the blue bits.
